News

Archive for January, 2019

Stroke is a very serious medical emergency and expert care needs
to be rapidly accessed in order to guarantee the best outcome for
the patient. To ensure this, specialist health centres are
necessary to manage patient flow 24/7, and research conducted
by PenCLAHRC’s Health Services Modelling
team has identified the optimal number and locations for
stroke services such as thrombolysis and thrombectomy, across
England.

As a direct result of operational research carried out by
PenCLAHRC's PenCHORD team, the NHS Long Term Plan published in
January 2019 has proposed that stroke services may be restructured
over the next five years, with sustainability and
transformation programmes and integrated care
systems reconfiguring stroke services...

Peninsula Public Involvement Group (PenPIG) member, Malcolm, has
recently embarked on a journey to become a Cochrane Citizen
Scientist. According to Cochrane, ‘Citizen Scientists’ play an
important role in the research community and ‘help identify the
evidence needed to make informed healthcare decisions.’ For
Malcolm, becoming a ‘Citizen Scientist’ was an obvious choice due
to his experience and background.

Throughout his lifetime, like many of us, Malcolm has witnessed
his friends and family endure multiple health complications. His
experiences sparked an interest in medical research, and he soon
found himself on various boards and groups; from leading health
walks for his...

Estimates suggest that 6% of doctors in the hospital workforce
may be performing below the standard that is expected of them at
any time. While serious cases will see doctors struck off, there
are others where a doctor could benefit from help via a process
called remediation.

Dr Nicola Brennan from the University of Plymouth is leading a
review to explore if and how remediation programmes work for
practising doctors and – as training a doctor costs around £500,000
to the UK taxpayer – how these processes might be improved in order
to retain talent, save money for the NHS and...

PenCLAHRC researchers have published further findings from their
review of the use of probiotics for the management of recurrent
abdominal pain in children.

Recurrent abdominal pain is the second commonest reason for
seeing a paediatrician after asthma. Affected children can be
deeply distressed, and can often miss out on school and social
activities.

PenCLAHRC Evidence Synthesis Team member, Dr Rebecca Abbott and
University of Exeter researchers, Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado and Dr
Alice Martin, brought together the research from recent updated
Cochrane reviews in a clinical evidence review for JAMA
Pediatrics.

They found that after three months of taking probiotics, in
particular Lactobacillus...

Researchers who specialise in optimising health services worked
with health trusts to produce evidence that secured £8 million in
funding for a new mental health ward at Torbay Hospital.

The new ward, which will be operated by Devon Partnership NHS
Trust (DPT), will reduce the number of placements that have to be
made away from Devon, keeping people closer to home for their care
and treatment.

The research, which involved University of Exeter academics, was
supported by PenCHORD (the Peninsula Collaboration for Health
Operational Research and Development), PenCLAHRC's operational
research team.

PenCHORD is a group of specialists that help healthcare
professionals, commissioners and patients...